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Song of Australia
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The music for the Song of Australia was composed by Carl Linger (1810-1862), who also received a prize of ten guineas. Berlin-born intellectual Carl Linger, who had studied at the Institute of Music in Berlin, came to South Australia in 1849 with his wife Wilhelmina on the Princess Louise. He settled in Gawler, grew potatoes, went broke and settled in Adelaide. Here he was far more successful. He was the founder and conductor of the German Liedertafel in 1858 and composer of church music, including the Ninety-third Psalm, Gloria, O Lord who is as Three and Vater unser. For several years he played the harmonium at St Frances Xavier Cathedral. When he died he was buried at the West Terrace Cemetery. Later, as part of the State's Centenary, a monument was built on his grave.
The Song of Australia impressed Charles Cameron Kingston, the Premier of South Australia, so much that he asked public school teachers to teach it to all their students. It never became Australia's National Anthem though as the Commonwealth government preferred Advance Australia Fair, composed in Sydney in 1878.
There is a land where summer skies
There is a land where honey flows,
There is a land where treasures shine
There is a land where homesteads peep
There is a land where, floating free, Caroline Carleton also wrote a commemorative work about John McDouall Stuart on his successful crossing of Australia in 1862 and again on the tenth anniversary of his achievement.
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| My Country | Waltzing Matilda |
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Henry Lawson also wrote a poem The Song of Australia in 1908,
same title but vastly different content.
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